Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook
Devcon 2020 Goes Virtual! LEARN MORE >

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 1
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous template Next
    #1

    How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

    I am quite having trouble figuring out how to copy records from a set to a USB flash drive or any storage device so that users from another location can just click a button and all the NEW records on the storage device will be copied into their alpha database, please take note that the alpha database with its tables, forms reports etc are the same from source to destination.Has anyone did this before? I tried a search on this but could not find a similar post. Please help. Thank you.
    Tags: None
    #2
    Re: How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

    "New" records are those that do not exist in the destination set?

    An append operation can be set to "unique only", those that do not exist. You will need an append operation for each table in the set with the unique only qualification.
    There can be only one.

    Comment

      #3
      Re: How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

      [QUOTE=Stan Mathews;613884]"New" records are those that do not exist in the destination set?
      yes Stan, How can this be done using a USB device? I want to copy the new records and append it to another computer.

      Comment

        #4
        Re: How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

        Synchronizing data between a "home" computer and a "remote" computer, using a USB device, is often quite complex.

        If the "remote" computer is not going to be entering or changing the data this is much simpler. Usually only a matter of "copying" all the files from your database directory to the usb, and then "copying" all the files from the usb to the "remote" machine. There are "Directory" functions in Alpha Five that can make this very easy. Be advised that this approach should NOT be used if the "remote" machine is entering or changing data in your application because the "copy" from the USB will overwrite all the data. Is that clear?

        Added later ...
        Jet, I see in the other thread ( discussing custom auto-increment field calcs ) that it's likely your "remote" users will be entering and changing data. This means they cannot use the "copy" functions in Alpha to move data from the USB to the "remote" work stations. Instead, as Stan suggested above, you'll probably want to create a custom append operation that can be run from the "remote" workstation, to retrieve data from the USB device.

        In planning for this you must take into consideration "changes", "deletions", and "enters" at the "home" machine.
        And, if your goal is to synchronize the "home" machine with the "remote" machine, the reverse will be true. You must take into consideration "changes", "deletes", and "enters" at the "remote" machine.

        This gets complicated in a hurry.
        Last edited by Tom Cone Jr; 06-18-2012, 07:00 AM.

        Comment

          #5
          Re: How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

          I take it the user clicks on a button to do the append operation. I would simply preceed this with the ui_get_file() and the user locates the file on the usb. The rest is history!
          -----------------------------------------------
          Regards
          Mark Pearson
          [email protected]
          Youtube channel
          Website

          Comment

            #6
            Re: How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

            Yap Tom, I am planning to create a custom autoincrement of all primary keys so that I can just append all the newly added/edit records based on dates if it is possible, problem is how to append from a USB device?

            Comment

              #7
              Re: How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

              Jet, I fear the append is only one of several problems your plan to "synchronize" the home and remote machines will involve. The first problem is how to identify records that are entered, how to identify records that are changed, how to identify records that are deleted. Only after that series of problems is solved does it make sense (to me anyway) to begin worrying about how to move things from one machine to another.

              Comment

                #8
                Re: How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

                I see, Thank you Tom for the time saver tip, so it is impossible then to do such in alpha five?

                Edited:
                Has anyone did this kind of update?
                Last edited by JetLi; 06-19-2012, 02:52 AM.

                Comment

                  #9
                  Re: How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

                  Jet, I didn't say it was impossible. Just complex. i.e. difficult and error prone

                  Give the matter some thought yourself. How might such a "synchronized" system be built?

                  Comment

                    #10
                    Re: How to Copy Records from a database using a USB Flash Drive

                    Hi Jet - I reckon its not impossible in alpha 5 if its not impossible using any other programming method. Do you have another programming language that will do that?
                    A workable way to approach this is by using transactional methodology. I have successfully run an offline office as though it was linked a networked main system, periodically updating and re-sending. It was as up-to date as the latest uploaded data.
                    This was written 20 years ago - in gwbasic, and it would be 10 times quicker to do in A5, buts that's not the issue. Design and planning is whats lacking here - there's no magic bullet.
                    Work out each operation and the type of tracking required to effect update. Use record number flagging when sent back for all tables to detect new records when returned, and create change tracking transactions for static record table. That sort of thing.

                    I must say - wherever you are in this technological world should it require physically sending flash drives for operational program data - even sat phones if need be or a local library or whatever.

                    Comment

                    Previous template Next
                    Working...
                    X